History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

My Historical Fiction from Last Year

| September 19, 2024

I haven’t posted a summary of my historical fiction for a while, in part because there hasn’t been much to post. But last October, I released Unfixed Timelines 3 and Unfixed Timelines Omnibus. The former includes seven stories and one poem, several of which were previously published, along with essays about the history I altered […]

The Non-Player Review of Video Games: An Ode to Kinzie (Saints Row 3+)

| September 18, 2024

One of my favorite things about most of the video games Jeremy plays is the characters. Like, I don’t really care that much about the plot or the gameplay, but I inevitably have a character (or three) who I really glom onto. In the case of Saints Row the Third and beyond, that character is Kinzie […]

Choosing the Location for Promise Me Nothing

| September 17, 2024

When I set out to write Promise Me Nothing, I worked long and hard on finding the right location for it. I knew I wanted to have the setting in the Pacific Northwest for a somewhat mild climate. However, I also needed to find a setting that would be far from any mass population centers, because […]

The Evolving Short Story Market from 2024 Nebulas Conference

| September 16, 2024

In addition to catching up on WriteHive panels, I’m also working through my list of panels at the 2024 Nebulas Conference that I didn’t get to watch at the time they were broadcast online. (If you have a 2024 Nebulas membership, you can watch the saved videos and more; if you don’t have one, you […]

Fun for Friday: Eggcorns and Malapropisms

| September 13, 2024

Do you know the difference between a malapropism and an eggcorn? Sometimes, they overlap, but this article explains the difference between the two things. If you’re a word nerd, you might just enjoy reading the article. But if you want to use this as a writing prompt, I think you could have some fun with either […]

Researching Nineteenth Century Diving for Brass and Glass 3

| September 12, 2024

When I was writing Brass and Glass 3: The Boiling Sea, I knew at least some of my characters were going to need to dive into that Boiling Sea in order to find the treasure they were looking for. But my setting is steampunk and roughly analogous to the nineteenth century in terms of technological influences. […]

Review of Strange Locations

| September 11, 2024

The Strange Locations anthology, edited by Marissa Van Uden (Apex Book Company, 2024), is a limited release collection of dark speculative travel guides told in microfiction format. Tiny and beautifully crafted, each of these thirty brief tales hints at a larger story of an unusual place. There were a few pieces that really stood out […]

August 2024 Recap

| September 10, 2024

By the numbers: Stories out at the beginning of the month: 53 Acceptances received: 1 Rejections received: 39 (+2) Stories withdrawn: 0 Resubmissions: 27 New Submissions: 14 Stories out at the end of the month: 53 A weirdly parallel month, with the same number of pieces out at the beginning and end of the month! […]

Completing The Wayward Writer!

| September 9, 2024

Throughout 2023 and most of 2024, I worked through the entirety of Ariel Gore’s The Wayward Writer. I took a few weeks off here and there for vacations, but I basically spent 78 weeks working through one exercise a week. I talked a little bit about hitting the halfway point here. Overall, I found the entire […]

Fun for Friday: September Historic Events

| September 6, 2024

While I wasn’t able to find a page with many “weird” historic events for September, I’ve got a couple of options for those looking for historical events to inspire your writing or other creative endeavors. Restless (a UK-based site) has a list of twenty-two historic events that happened in September, nearly one for every day […]